The Coming Race, by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Chapter 28.

When Taee and I found ourselves alone on the broad road that lay between the city and the chasm
through which I had descended into this region beneath the light of the stars and sun, I said under my breath, “Child
and friend, there is a look in your father’s face which appals me. I feel as if, in its awful tranquillity, I gazed
upon death.”

Taee did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and as if debating with himself by what words to soften some
unwelcome intelligence. At last he said, “None of the Vril-ya fear death: do you?”

“The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race to which I belong. We can conquer it at the call of
duty, of honour, of love. We can die for a truth, for a native land, for those who are dearer to us than ourselves. But
if death do really threaten me now and here, where are such counteractions to the natural instinct which invests with
awe and terror the contemplation of severance between soul and body?”

Taee looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his voice as he replied, “I will tell my father what you
say. I will entreat him to spare your life.”

“He has, then, already decreed to destroy it?”

“’Tis my sister’s fault or folly,” said Taee, with some petulance. “But she spoke this morning to my father; and,
after she had spoken, he summoned me, as a chief among the children who are commissioned to destroy such lives as
threaten the community, and he said to me, ‘Take thy vril staff, and seek the stranger who has made himself dear to
thee. Be his end painless and prompt.’”

“And,” I faltered, recoiling from the child —“and it is, then, for my murder that thus treacherously thou hast
invited me forth? No, I cannot believe it. I cannot think thee guilty of such a crime.”

“It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the community; it would be a crime to slay the smallest
insect that cannot harm us.”

“If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because your sister honours me with the sort of preference
which a child may feel for a strange plaything, it is not necessary to kill me. Let me return to the people I have
left, and by the chasm through which I descended. With a slight help from you I might do so now. You, by the aid of
your wings, could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you found, and have no doubt preserved. Do
but that; assist me but to the spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for ever, and as surely as if I
were among the dead.”

“The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand now on the very place where it yawned. What see you?
Only solid rock. The chasm was closed, by the orders of Aph–Lin, as soon as communication between him and yourself was
established in your trance, and he learned from your own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do you not
remember when Zee bade me not question you as to yourself or your race? On quitting you that day, Aph–Lin accosted me,
and said, ‘No path between the stranger’s home and ours should be left unclosed, or the sorrow and evil of his home may
descend to ours. Take with thee the children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril staves till the
fall of their fragments fills up every chink through which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.’”

As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before me. Huge and irregular, the granite masses, showing by
charred discolouration where they had been shattered, rose from footing to roof-top; not a cranny!

“All hope, then, is gone,” I murmured, sinking down on the craggy wayside, “and I shall nevermore see the sun.” I
covered my face with my hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had so often forgotten when the heavens had declared
His handiwork. I felt His presence in the depths of the nether earth, and amidst the world of the grave. I looked up,
taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet smile into the face of the child, said, “Now, if
thou must slay me, strike.”

Taee shook his head gently. “Nay,” he said, “my father’s request is not so formally made as to leave me no choice. I
will speak with him, and may prevail to save thee. Strange that thou shouldst have that fear of death which we thought
was only the instinct of the inferior creatures, to whom the convictions of another life has not been vouchsafed. With
us, not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish,” he continued after a little pause, “would it reconcile
thee more to departure from this form of life to that form which lies on the other side of the moment called ‘death,’
did I share thy journey? If so, I will ask my father whether it be allowable for me to go with thee. I am one of our
generation destined to emigrate, when of age for it, to some regions unknown within this world. I would just as soon
emigrate now to regions unknown, in another world. The All–Good is no less there than here. Where is he not?”

“Child,” said I, seeing by Taee’s countenance that he spoke in serious earnest, “it is crime in thee to slay me; it
were a crime not less in me to say, ‘Slay thyself.’ The All–Good chooses His own time to give us life, and his own time
to take it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking with thy father, he decides on my death, give me the longest warning
in thy power, so that I may pass the interval in self-preparation.”